Earlier in March, NASA’s Mars rover Curiosity arrived at a scenic rock formation nicknamed “Mont Mercou,” after a mountain in southeast France. The rover posed for a selfie in front of the Martian rock outcrop after collecting its 30th rock sample to date.
Roughly 4 billion years ago, Mars looked a lot different than it does today. For starters, its atmosphere was thicker and warmer, and liquid water flowed across its surface. This included rivers, standing lakes, and even a deep ocean that covered much of the northern hemisphere. Evidence of this warm, watery past has been preserved all over the planet in the form of lakebeds, river valleys, and river deltas.
For some time, scientists have been trying to answer a simple question: where did all that water go? Did it escape into space after Mars lost its atmosphere, or retreat somewhere? According to new research from Caltech and the NASA Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL), between 30% and 90% of Mars’ water went underground. These findings contradict the widely-accepted theory that Mars lost its water to space over the course of eons.
The research was led by Eva Scheller, a Ph.D. candidate at the California Institute of Technology (Caltech). She was joined by Caltech Prof. Bethany Ehlmann, who is also the associate director for the Keck Institute for Space Studies; Caltech Prof. Yuk Yung, a senior research scientist with NASA JPL; Caltech graduate student Danica Adams; and JPL research scientist Renyu Hu.
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# **The SRIC3 Program is now online!**
Space Renaissance just published the Program of the SRIC3 World Congress The Civilian Space Development\.
The Congress will be virtual, on Attendify, and broadcasted worldwide.
With an internal global ocean twice the size of Earth’s oceans combined, Jupiter’s moon Europa carries the potential for conditions suitable for life. But the frigid temperatures and the nonstop pummeling of the surface from Jupiter’s radiation make it a tricky target to explore: Mission engineers and scientists must design a spacecraft hardy enough to withstand the radiation yet sensitive enough to gather the science needed to investigate Europa’s environment.
The Europa Clipper orbiter will swoop around Jupiter on an elliptical path, dipping close to the moon on each flyby to conduct detailed reconnaissance. The science includes gathering measurements of the internal ocean, mapping the surface composition and its geology, and hunting for plumes of water vapor that may be venting from the icy crust.
SPARKS, Nev. (KOLO) — Their headquarters sits on a hill overlooking east Sparks, but Sierra Nevada Corporation’s sights are set much higher.
Long known for the development of high-tech equipment for applications here on Earth, they are also a major player in space exploration and research.
They provided some key parts to the latest Mars rover, Perseverance, and in a virtual press conference from their plant in Colorado Wednesday they announced an ambitious timeline for their latest projects—commercial flights with its Dreamchaser spaceplane to the International Space Station next year…and by 2028, a replacement for the space station itself.
An ancient crater lake in the southern highlands of Mars appears to have been fed by glacial runoff, bolstering the idea that the Red Planet had a cold and icy past.
Shooting beams of ions at proton clouds, like throwing nuclear darts at the speed of light, can provide a clearer view of nuclear structure. Credit: Jose-Luis Olivares, MIT
Shooting beams of ions at proton clouds may help researchers map the inner workings of neutron stars.
Physicists at MIT and elsewhere are blasting beams of ions at clouds of protons —like throwing nuclear darts at the speed of light — to map the structure of an atom ’s nucleus.
Virgin Galactic passengers won’t circle Earth like astronauts aboard the International Space Station do. But they will get to experience a few minutes of weightlessness and see the curve of Earth against the blackness of space. More than 600 people have booked a ride to date, at a price (most recently) of $250000 per seat, company representatives have said.
VSS Unity has company.
UVS images faint auroral rings that likely originate at edge of gas giant’s magnetosphere.
Distribution bots.
Boston Dynamics is best known for its robot dog Spot, a machine designed to work in a range of environments, from offshore oil rigs to deep underground mines. But in recent years, the company has increasingly focused attention on the logistics space, and today is unveiling a new robot with just one application in mind: moving boxes in warehouses.
The robot is called Stretch and looks relatively dull for a Boston Dynamics creation. It’s not modeled after humans or animals, and instead aims to be as practical as possible. It has a square mobile base containing a set of wheels, a “perception mast” with cameras and other sensors, and a huge robotic arm with seven degrees of freedom and a suction pad array on the end that can grab and move boxes up to 23 kilograms (50 lbs) in weight.
What connects Stretch to other Boston Dynamics machines is a focus on mobility. Usually, when automation equipment is installed in warehouses the system is bolted down in one place with a workflow modeled around it. Stretch, by comparison, is designed to slide into any existing workplace where it could be useful loading or unloading goods.
